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English
Journeys Group: Weaver Hughes Ensemble |
| Dolan Cummings | |
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Two halves of a middle class couple drive at night in opposite directions into an England where the familiar signposts no longer make sense. English Journeys is a retrospective portrait of a marriage built on comfortable compromise. Kathy and Peter eased from student radicalism into a morally-focused but unmistakably bourgeois existence - she a liberal barrister and he working for 'Europe'. Now their marriage is collapsing: Kathy has taken to the road, and so has Peter, not to find her, but for much the same reason. Unlike an American road movie, there is a sense of urgency here. You don't just drive in England - you drive from A to B. Both drivers pretend that they know where they're going, but there is nowhere either wants to be. Flashbacks to other journeys fill in the gaps in this story of middle class angst. This is not a radical critique of bourgeois mores. The couple's disillusion is complete; their current dissatisfaction with their middle class life seems of a piece with their earlier misgivings about Kathy's sanctimonious father - a celebrated left-wing academic. They have no answers. Peter yearns for a simpler existence, and waxes nostalgic about a former girlfriend who worked in a flower shop. But Jo, a physically and emotionally bruised runaway he picks up, reminds him that small-town life is nothing to celebrate. English Journeys is bleak, but somehow rewarding. The staging gives a nod to the physical constraints of car travel while giving the actors the freedom of the stage, a bit like a Playschool imaginary bus. It's a peculiar technique, but strangely effective in expressing a sense of self-imposed claustrophobia.
30
July to 25 August.
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